


the only souls i see are ghosts

by smilebackwards



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Sixth Sense Fusion, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 19:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19410328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: Rodney can see ghosts. John has some unfinished business.





	the only souls i see are ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> For [Atlantis Film Festival](https://atlantisfilmfestival.dreamwidth.org/). Title is from Lonesome Dreams by Lord Huron.

Rodney can see ghosts. This is inconvenient for a number of reasons. His heating bill is atrocious and his Wikipedia article, which should rightfully by this point in his life have a section about a Nobel Prize, instead has notations about suspected mental health issues.

Scientists as brilliant as Rodney are generally given a certain amount of leeway toward eccentricity. Rodney would have fallen well within normal parameters if he hadn’t been giving a presentation at a symposium in front of a packed lecture hall, live streamed to a dozen other universities around the world, where he’d been asked a particularly asinine audience question by Peter Kavanagh. Rodney had given a scathingly eloquent five minute rebuttal, supplemented with well-deserved personal asides, without noticing the dead silence fallen over the auditorium. 

Kavanagh had apparently died in a car crash two days prior.

_Oh, you bastard,_ Rodney had thought later, reading the obituary. 

But the worst of it was that it hadn’t even been Kavanagh’s fault really. Most ghosts, Rodney’s found, don’t know they’re dead. 

Which is why the tall ghost with stuck up black hair and a battered US military uniform is a surprise. “Hey,” he says, from where he’s slouching in the doorway of Rodney’s favorite coffee shop, all the color about him diluted, his edges vaguely undefined, “you’re the ghost whisperer, right? McKay?” 

Rodney doesn’t bother with the usual shoulder check he would’ve given anyone living who’d been standing between him and his caffeine fix. Walking through ghosts comes with a bit of a chill but Rodney’s used to that by now. 

“I’m John,” the ghost says, following Rodney into the shop. “You can see me, right?” He waves a hand in front of Rodney’s face.

Rodney ignores him and orders a coffee as black as his soul. There are seven living customers in the shop and one other ghost, peacefully reading an old newspaper with a headline from the 1960s. 

Rodney settles himself in an empty corner and puts his bluetooth in his ear for show. “You do realize no one else can see or hear you?” he says scathingly. “I’d prefer to avoid further imprecations about my mental stability.” 

“Oh,” John says, glancing around. “Sorry.” Ghosts seem to lack a good degree of spatial awareness. They focus on Rodney and their unfinished business to exclusion.

“You know you’re dead,” Rodney says, trying to hold back the accusation in his voice. Ghosts can be very touchy. Any upset and the temperature around them drops a good fifteen degrees. Rodney’s been described as cold-blooded and relegated to inferior lab space near boiler rooms more times than he can count.

“Yeah,” John says, looking down at the silvery red blood stains across his abdomen. “I wasn’t coming back from that.”

“Do you know what your unfinished business is?” This might be the easiest ghost Rodney’s ever dealt with. Usually there’s a lot more anger and wailing and jump scares.

“Well, I was shot,” John says laconically. “I guess I’d like the bastard to pay for it.”

Rodney doubts he means some unknown enemy combatant. Unfinished business for ghosts tends to be personal. And Rodney’s seen NCIS. It’s always someone closer to home. “Do you know the guy’s name?” Rodney asks.

“Colonel Christopher Meers,” John says. “He and some of his unit were stealing weapons and C4 to sell on the black market. I caught them in the armory.” He waves a hand over his stomach. “Didn’t get much further than that.”

“Okay, fine,” Rodney says. “Give me your last name and location of death and I’ll pass it along.”

John stares at him. “You’d just do that? No questions asked?” 

“Sure,” Rodney says. He’s called in hundreds of times to the police tip line. This is just a few steps further. “I have military contacts. I know who we can slip it to.”

Rodney opens his laptop, lies about his demographics as he creates a new email account, and types up the pertinent information. He sends it to General O’Neill, who doesn’t check his email, and Samantha Carter who does. “Done,” he says. “Have a great afterlife.”

John shuffles in place uncertainly. Something about him wavers slightly, like the shimmer of heat on asphalt, but it stabilizes a few seconds after. “Maybe I need to see the consequences through?” John says, frowning at his continued existence on the earthly plane.

Rodney sighs, put upon, but he doesn’t really mean it. John’s a refreshing change of pace as far as ghosts go. “Do you know how to play Prime/Not Prime?”

-

Six weeks later, Colonel Meers and three shady Marine sergeants are convicted on one count of murder and four of weapons smuggling.

Rodney swallows thickly as he reads the news article. 

It’s not that he _likes_ John, obviously. It’s not that he enjoys John’s sarcastic commentary on the things people get up to when they think no one’s there. It’s not that Rodney finds it strangely endearing when John bangs on the pipes and gusts cold wind through the apartment sometimes just to fuck with him. 

It’s just that they’ve established a routine. John rides shotgun with Rodney to work and he’s far more efficient at solving equations than the grad students Rodney’s been saddled with. Sometimes John can even be convinced to make the interminable three hallway walk down to the cafeteria and return to tell Rodney whether there’s blue jello and if the special is citrus-free or if he’ll be forced to subsist on the year old stash of granola bars in his desk drawer.

And John is useful with the ghosts. He’s like a ghost bouncer. All the ghosts that used to suddenly appear right up in Rodney face, rudely taking years off his life, years that the world needs him to be alive to make sweepingly important discoveries in the field of physics, wait patiently behind John like he’s first in line or fall back in the face of his cold glance and the psychokinesis he’s been practicing.

But it’s terrible too. On movie nights, Rodeny will put a bottle of beer in front of John because it’s too sad not to, but at the end of the night it’ll still be there, full, leaving a ring on Rodney’s coffee table, because it’s not like John can actually _drink_ it. And John will sit through the nights, forever awake, with the eerie blue glow of infomercials flickering over his face, highlighting the hollows of his cheekbones.

Rodney shows him the article. It’s not his secret to keep. John isn’t his to keep.

“Huh,” John says. 

Rodney waits for the white light, the high pitched hum, all the beautiful physics that someday he’s going to understand due in part to this secret bird’s eye view that he’s suddenly no longer grateful for.

John doesn’t disappear.

Rodney stares at John, waiting. His eyes feel strangely warm. A minute goes by, then two, and Rodney breaks. “But, isn’t that what you needed?” he asks. His voice has gone shrill. He clears his throat. “Don’t you want to—” he flails his arms in a wide, undescriptive circle, “cross over?” 

John shrugs. “I could give it a few years. I want to see how that experiment at the lab turns out and, I mean, who knows if they have football or _Back to the Future_ on the other side. Kind of a gamble.”

“Right,” Rodney says. 

“It’s not so bad here,” John says. His face is angled away, but Rodney can see the ghost of a smile on his lips.

“Right,” Rodney repeats, stronger, and John’s hand on his shoulder doesn’t feel cold at all.


End file.
